By Alan J. Ouimet S.F.O. former FBI special Agent in Counter Intelligence and Terrorism, member of the Secular Franciscan Order, and founder and President of the Franciscan Family Apostolate. Since 1972 he has been a student of Astrology.Bio HERE.

“In this year we will see neither a solar or a lunar eclipse, but most wondrouspositions of the planets will occur. For in February there will be small, mean, aswell as great conjunctions, 16 of which shall occupy a watery sign. These willsignify indubitable change, variation and aberration for almost the entire world,climes, kingdoms, provinces, estates, dignitaries, brutes, sea creatures, andcrops, such as we have rarely heard of for many centuries from historiographersor our ancestors. Therefore lift up your heads, Christian men.”(Almanach for the year 1524).

What is Past is Prologue?

The much feared deluge suggested in the above quote never occurred. As a matter of fact the day it was to occur, the deluge in piscibus, was a sunny day. The planets, it was thought, were to be aligned in the water sign of Pisces exactly as in the days of Noah. It was believed that the predicted Flood of 1524 was a punishment from God for the corruption of the Church and the Lutheran rebellion.

In 1596 England, the Star Chamber, the government agency which mandated the censorship of publications, recalled all the publications of “A Most Strange and Wonderful Prophecie.” According to the astrologer, Tarqualas Vandermers, this publication predicted the end of history in that year through various natural disasters, wars and bloodshed, as punishment from God. If England would change its ways, because it is the “elect and chosen,” it would escape the fate of the “papal Anti-Christ”, the Turks and the Spanish. The Star Chamber squelched its publication, destroyed the printing press, forbidding the printer forever to again operate a print shop. The prophecy was considered a danger to the Elizabethan government as “the potent apocalypticism …was too dangerous to be ignored” because of the volatile nature of the English political scene at the time. Again, as in 1524, nothing happened. Are we going to see the same empty stage for 2012, where the audience showed up but not the act?

Nonetheless, the astrological chart for December 21, 2012 is amazing. As a matter of fact, to the studied astrologer, it is stunning! One wonders how the Mayan astrologers arrived at this apparently auspicious date inasmuch as the aspect configurations and the planets involved, unseen by the naked eye, are familiar only to contemporary astrologers. Whatever method they used and whatever “the end of the Mayan calendar” means astrologically the 2012 chart is one of international social, civil, political and military unrest. However it plays out it will be difficult. The world will be a different place, much like the 70’s were to the 50’s. It will be a consciousness raising period for some, and hurtful to others, especially those who will resist change. The question is – will it be a single event, a catastrophe as the moneyed media makers will portray to line their pockets? Ironically, in the less civilized age of 1596 England, the producer of the movie “2012” would be sitting in prison for six months and prohibited from ever again producing a movie! Or will Dec 21, 2012 be looked on as the time in which tremendous changes started having their influence – a rebirth where changes over time spur belief in a new paradigm? If so, what paradigm? There is a boatload of paradigms from which to pick.– democracy, autocracy, theocracy, Christianity, Islam, socialism, capitalism, New Age. All want center stage. Or will everyone decide to jettison their long held beliefs for some other paradigm not yet known until it visits us on December 21, 2012?

End of the world scenarios have been with us since pre-Christian times. The Jews awaited the “day of the Lord” – one day there is violence, the next day all is transformed and the lion will lie down with the lamb. The quick fix didn’t exist for Christianity, as seen in the Book of Revelations. The day of the Lord would be coming in a painful destruction with the battle of Armageddon as old habits die hard. In the Middle Ages, the Calabrian monk, Joachim of Fiore, prophesied the coming of “the new spiritual man” and the age of the Holy Spirit, an age of plenitude intellectus, downplaying the violence of Revelations. In the 18th Century it was the “novus ordo”, the new world order, that still appears on US currency. In the 20th century, “the new socialist man” was heralded by the Soviet Union and Germany proclaimed the advent of the 1000 year Reich by the pure Aryan. In a word, fear of going to the brink and ending it all and actually almost doing so has been a human legacy for a long, long time. Lessons learned? Most assuredly the most important lesson is this – if a paradigm shift is in the offing, then who you are and what you believe will definitely affect your reality. And, if past is prologue, the change that does come will happen piecemeal through our response to events that precede 2012 and thereafter.

Astrology, today as was true yesterday, is not equipped to address the doomsday scenario. In the past, attempts were made but failed. The Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, predicted the end of Islam with the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. In the 13th Century; the infamous bubonic plague, called the Black Death, considered a punishment from God, was declared, after the fact, by the doctors of the University of Paris to be the result of changes in the air caused by the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The 14th Century Roman Catholic French Cardinal, Pierre d’Ailly, predicted the coming of the Anti-Christ in 1789 because of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. According to the Almanach of 1524 the world was to be consumed by a flood as in the time of Noah as the result of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn with other planets in the water sign of Pisces. This prediction was believed by many astrologers including Lucas Gaurico, the famous and most favored astrologer of Pope Julius II and Pope Paul III who rewarded his astrological prowess by making him a Bishop.

Of all these predictions that of Cardinal d’Ailly’s is the most instructive. For a French Cardinal to predict the end of the power of the Catholic Church, in France, four centuries after his own time is significant. His astrology was apparently right but the reality of how it would happen was wrong. The Anti-Christ did not come as a person but as a series of events, spurred by an anti-Christian spirit, which decimated the French Catholic Church. France had been THE jewel in the papal tiara, having been the papal seat for almost one hundred years in the 14th Century. Its king was known as “the Christian King.” Even today, the Church has all but vanished in its influence in France, subject to the secular spirit of the French Revolution. The Cardinal’s prediction was expected in biblical terms, as in Revelations. Instead, it manifested the zeitgeist of the age, reacting against the Ancien Regime and the Church, changing the face of Europe from the seat of Christendom to home of secularism; and in many respects anti-Christian. Cardinal d’Ailly would be stunned as to how it all came together.